Interesting article from Montreal.
Increasing access to psilocybin as civil disobedience.

…and here’s the New York Post getting in on the action, with an article which I consider obviously intended to trigger a crackdown by NYPD on the totally brazen psilocybin mushroom market here.

So here’s the thing: psychedelics have relatively few externalized costs relative to other psychoactive substances. Since the 1960s the negative impacts of psychedelics on public health and public safety have been low – lower than alcohol, lower than tobacco, lower than opioids, lower than stimulants, etc….so low that there was next to no news coverage of psychedelics until about 2018
Colloquially we say “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”

What then does society gain from the Post’s coverage and a crackdown on dealing mushrooms in Washington Square Park? Who are the victims of the retail sale there and resulting ingestion of psilocybin?

Now, of course it could just be a matter of time until someone freaks out and gives psychedelics a bad name, e..g, by shooting people randomly at a music festival, and I believe that the illegal market is being massively irresponsible in not taking responsibility for the welfare of their customers and society at large through formulating a code of ethical business practices. In fact, it is the illegal market that needs to take the lead and create the foundation of a legal market outside of federal drug approval.

In 2019 I told everyone what would happen in New York City after cannabis legalization, and that the City was unprepared so, yes, I think that there’s a lot of moronhood in the NYC cannabis scene. Sigh. I did what I could.

Likewise, I assume that the burgeoning retail psilocybin market will increase rapidly with the nonstop media coverage of psychedelics, including, two examples among many, high-profile pop culture icons coming out with their psychedelic testimonials and similarly surreal bipartisanship between the extremes of each of the major parties.
There is a potential for lethal FOMO unless you become ‘experienced’ in the Jimi Hendrix sense.

There are many possible causes for concern about the unlicensed supply side of the psilocybin market, but I think that the most obvious and practical one is purity/adulteration. That is always the case.
Food and drug law is at its root a consumer protection law and the FDA is a consumer protection agency that administers the Food Drug and Cosmetics Act.

The Post’s messaging relies on the classic prohibitionist fallacy of mischaracterizing correlation with causation. (The Post is NYC’s conservative tabloid.) The Post’s coverage must be addressed in full later since we can see that it’s trying out an editorial position – association of the psilocybin market with crime. (That broken windows reference is perfect.) Let’s leave that issue aside for the moment.

If purity/adulteration is a main concern then address the purity/testing issue proactively and remove it as a justification for prohibition by the municipal government. Why is the obvious next step not to require purity testing of psilocybin products under municipal law? The City is already facilitating onsite consumption sites for psychoactive substances that are illegal under state law. It would be essentially the equivalent of a de facto discretionary and conditional non-enforcement policy, like, in very general terms, the City’s non-enforcement policy towards the medical cannabis market for many years of cannabis prohibition.

There is a risk that is unique to psychedelics: assessing the characteristics of consumers and declining to sell to consumers under a certain age or with indicators that the prospective consumer probably shouldn’t ingest without supervision. (There are circumstances under which an alcohol retailer must decide whether to serve a patron.) However, I assume that that project is one that requires a different, more extensive and more expensive intervention than addressing risk by mandating laboratory testing under municipal law.

What am I missing?
I assume that one is the cost of testing to the legacy market.
I’m sure that issue can be solved.

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• Source: https://psychedeliclaw.blog/2023/07/14/the-market-doesnt-sit-still/